Things are still trucking along over here at DCRC! We've had a far busier year than expected, which means no downtime to release extra goodies for Hollownull or anything else. But we've been developing several projects in the background, and as 2025 rears its ugly head, there's looking to be a lot that's going to change around these parts.
For now though, Tazjec's scene selection is underway! And over the next week or two after writing this, we're planning on sending down a couple non-update drops for you.
Also, the high-quality rippers over at SiIvaGunner just released the TWELVE BY TWELVE FUSION COLLAB over on their Youtube channel. Give that some love.
Posted by Austinado on 8/2/2024.
SUMMER 2024 CATCH-UP EXTRAVAGANZA
The worst season of the Deconreconstruction year is well and truly upon us. With its scorching heat comes a drought of updates, leaving the inhabitants of our fair website like thirsty little flowers left to wilt in a climate they weren't made for. Unlike the noble cactus, who take the lack of status pretty well on account of the fact that it does not have to be shoved into a lousy metaphor.
Sorry for the impromptu break! No real reason for it. We just get extremely busy and a little miserable with the constant intake of natural Vitamin D in our systems. We weren't slacking off! We were just not allowing ourselves to rot in front of our screens and tablets all day every day. I know, I know. "Too many excuses! Back to toiling in the mines!" We feel the same way as you do when we're alone, covering our faces with blistered hands, trying to hide our tears.
So what's been going on with us since March? WELL...
3/22/24 CHARITY LIVESTREAM- As per the last newspost, for our thirteenth anniversary Heather and I both committed to doing a twenty-four hour charity livestream with a lofty goal of $6,000 USD. All proceeds going to Palestine relief.
We thought this might have been a little excessive, but it turns out our fans are even more insane than we thought. Because we raised over $8,550 USD instead.
There's genuinely too much that happened for me to give you guys a full recap of the event. But luckily, the stream in its entirety has been archived on the Deconreconstruction Youtube channel. We had amazing guests from all walks of Vast Error and Vast Error adjacent life, released tons of official panel redraws from prolific artists and friends we have in the community, shared several previews of new music coming in the near future, and even had some mysterious interlopers from beyond pop in. Our friends at SiIvaGunner might just be planning something big too...
We had a few hiccups in trying to process the donations during and after the event, but we were able to mostly get it to work out in the end thankfully. Here's our receiptsfor posterity!
Beyond that, there are still several goal incentives we have yet to do. I promised chat that I would buy this ultra rare Kid Cuisine Furby, and I intend to deliver as soon as I have plentiful dosh. My son WILL come home. I'm going to name him Crump.
Anyway! Look forward to a CHARM GEOCACHE, CANON FANTROLLS, A QNA WITH ANDREW HUSSIE, A MURRIT DATING SIM and a RERUNS/WARTORN TRAILS ARCHIVE in your probable future. I can't promise how long it will take to complete these, but I can promise they will happen.
Thanks for making me a halfway decent pizza and watching me play Bart's Nightmare! Let's do it again sometime!
SNOWBOUND BLOOD- The long-awaited, palpably-anticipated, multiple-novel-length, multimedia-narrative-nightmare that has been Snowbound Blood: A Vast Error Story has finally come to its conclusion. It's not getting up again anytime soon, so I feel like I'm well within my rights to utilize past participles.
The epilogue is something I feel you truly have to experience to believe. I had my hands all over these final scenes, and it gives you something you won't find anywhere else in the Vast Error mythos you won't have again for a long while. But play the rest of the game first! Don't just skip to the end! You'll find nothing but judgement there, or even a distinct lack of it. Whichever sounds scarier to you.
We intend to release the game's original soundtrack in the very near future! It just needed a lot of track art. There's also plans to give the current release one last big update to punch up some dialogue, clean up some extra code and make the product the best it can possibly be. Other than that aforementioned Dating Sim though, we'll probably be leaving our visual novel run here for now.
So long, Regulator. It's a beautiful morning.
WALKAROUND- One of the most substantial previews we showed off during the 3/22 stream was an alpha build of the upcoming Arcjec and Taz walkaround.
Talksprites have all been assigned and given concept art, more work on the overworld has been completed, menus have been designed and that huge honkin' document that outlines the entirety of the game has been finished!
There have got to be people clawing at their enclosures, frothing at the mouth to get their hands on this. I can't blame you! There's so much OOMPH even in these little snippets! Surely the Tazjec Scene Selection Section (SSS) is the game, right?!?!?!
Unfortunately, creating a mini-RPG up from nothing is an arduous task that requires all hands on deck to complete. And a lot of our hands are too sore from the regular mining duties to commit fully to consistently grinding on another project of this scale. We learned that the hard way! Neither of us are gonna be ready to handle this thing until we take a long period to lock in and toil away at whittling down this one giant developmental roadblock.
You'll know when that happens. For now? Trust the process.
DUODENARY- A new side album by our favorite EDM and Jungle beat god Goomy premiered a couple months back! It's a concept album about the twelve aspects of existence and those that define them.
As always, you can find it up on our Bandcamp and can download it for free along with all the other Vast Error Music Team projects!
NEW MERCH- Not much to say here, but we've had some new (and reworked) merch put out on SHOP@DCRC!
You guys know what's up. Give it a gander and see if anything suits your fancy. I'm a big fan of the Act 3 Act 1 Cast Buttons done by Neptune, myself! But everything is expectedly spectacular.
DCRC 2.0- The website will be going through some changes over the course of the next year or two. We're slowly but surely becoming less of the hosts of Vast Error and more of an independent multimedia hub for all kinds of creators, at the very least internally. This will also come with changes for Vast Error's reader experience as well, some of which we've been promising for years, but it's mostly the other stuff. This is the fabled release of DECONRECONSTRUCTION 2.0.
What are we scheming? New and exciting comic projects, son!
It's been talked about before, but we already have plans to adopt Run With Scissors to the site. Since then, we've also decided to take on ANOTHER COMIC that will be added to the site once DCRC 2.0 is fully engaged.
We'll be keeping the list of new material tight-knit as to not broaden our horizons too far, but needless to say, it's been an exciting change of pace. I even designed us a little mascot on a piece of scratch paper!
Why is this relevant again, though? Why are you putting all this extra slop in my Vast Error news soup?
THE NEW DCRC IP- This is why.
I haven't talked much about this! It didn't even get brought up during the charity stream section where it was initially revealed! That's because I wanted to give it a quick spotlight here. This is DCRC's first TRULY ORIGINAL IP.
I've been slow-cooking it with a bunch of our most talented comrade chefs along with these constantly outgoing Vast Error soups. Ciro and Hallie, two artists that we've worked with for years, will be leading the charge in the art and design department, and I've brought some of the strongest soldiers I've worked with to help flesh it out into something truly awesome.
Internally, we refer to it under the codename PROJECT JUMP.
I'm not at liberty to speak much about it this early on, and truthfully, you may not see much of it again for a long while. But what I will tell you is that we're intending on making this new webcomic project something truly special that hasn't been tried before to my knowledge. I want to approach it as though it's a new evolution of webcomic formulas, or perhaps a better term would be a SYNTHESIS of them.
What's it about? Can't talk much about that either! But if I were to give you an elevator pitch...
Put NO MORE HEROES, VENOM, JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE and CHAINSAW MAN in a blender, puree that shit for about five minutes, and slug it down like you're a bodybuilder on a narrative protein diet. You might just get a taste of what I'm talking about.
That about wraps up this catch-up! To summer-ize what you can expect for the rest of the year:
- UPDATES OF MANY VARIETIES - MUSIC - CHARITY STREAM GOAL RELEASES - JOY AND WHIMSY
"Catch you on the flipside, dudemeisters!" I say behind tears, before tripping over a stray rock with a face on it and dying instantly. It was a mercy killing.
Posted by Austinado on 3/18/2024.
On this fine Monday, I'd like to proudly announce the plans for Vast Error's 13th anniversary! God, this project is as old as me and Heather were when we started making it. Isn't that terrifying?
This year we'll be hosting a 24 HOUR LIVESTREAM on the DCRC Twitch channel, not only to celebrate the occasion, but also to receive active donations in support of two Palestinian relief efforts: E-SIMS FOR GAZA and CARE FOR GAZA.
All proceeds earned during the event will go to the charities mentioned above. Our base goal is to fundraise at least $6,000 USD in aid, which sounds like a lot for a webcomic hosting site whose main export is, for all intents and purposes, a fan project. But there's one thing we've learned after doing this gig for so long: ambition and effort can go a long way if you know where to direct them.
And we don't intend to just stream. No, that's too easy. We also have several guests who will be joining us throughout the day, along with special events and incentives that will either happen on stream or coordinated afterwards as a direct result of your donations, with stretch goals that go up to $10,000 USD. This includes PREVIEWS, RAFFLES, MERCH REVEALS, PANEL REDRAWS, MUSIC PREVIEWS, MESSAGES FROM BEYOND, and MORE!
We'll be posting more about the event in the coming days leading up to its start. It would be great if you all did the same!
Let's make this the best birthday we've had yet by shattering those numbers and fighting for a better world.
Posted by Austinado on 2/20/2024.
Quickly announcing that if you haven't had the chance, today is your last day to pick up the pinnacle of licensed crossover products at the end of your Corporate Mandated Soulmate Appreciation Wice. After this? Who knows if it will ever be able to see another release? These probabilities never last long.
Also I'd like to welcome some new artists to our ranks! Divo, Karma, and a secret, insidious third person who haunts the shadows. These people know their way around a troll or two, mostly because they've all been drawing ours for a while. Two of them have actually done track art before on Volume 5! Wow!
Anyway, next time you hear from me in your favorite news box will be right before 3/22. This year we're doing something radically different than our usual batch of drops and sneak previews. It's something I'm extremely accustomed to doing on a regular basis, but not in this particular context. Let's just say it'll be a day worth celebrating. Am I winking at you knowingly or is my eye twitching like a freak? Whatever makes you happiest is the right answer. ;)
I want to also finally get my shout outs from a couple posts ago out of the way. I've got ominous phones to answer, so I'll make this quick:
Since the dawn of man, humans have consistently gotten results by smashing two things together: sticks and stones, peanut butter and jelly, cars and rising death rates. Today, we'd like to announce the new ingenious merger of ideas that nobody could have ever guessed would actually happen... HOMESTUCK AND DECONRECONSTRUCTION.
That's right! Deconreconstruction is now partnered with the Homestuck Independent Creative Union and Homestuck Inc. as an officially licensed fan comic! I'm sure there are a lot of questions about the logistics, so allow me to give you the scoop.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
Andrew Hussie approached us and offered a free license to work with the IP. No royalties owed, no ties to What Pumpkin, VIZ Media, or any other corporate interest, and no outside influence from higher ups at the Homestuck Factory. (NOTE: The Homestuck Factory doesn't exist. That was a joke.)
Basically, he said: "You guys do good work, keep doing that." And then handed us the keys to our own little pocket of house-bound freedom.
WHAT IS THE HOMESTUCK INDEPENDENT CREATIVE UNION?
The HICU is an union of creative contributors which was established to consolidate members of future Homestuck projects, they make Homestuck: Beyond Canon and have been given a license just like ours. Stuck At Home Con has also been recently licensed in the same manner, and now, Vast Error is a part of this ever expanding network.
Having this license effectively gives us free reign to work within the full Homestuck universe and monetize ourselves in full to compensate for our efforts, as well as collaborate on new ideas with the other members involved.
WILL VAST ERROR OR ANY OF ITS RELATED PROJECTS BE CHANGED BY THIS?
Nope! As far as creative direction and narrative plans go, the comic and its spin-offs will be unaffected. Vast Error will remain completely segregated within its own mythos. Homestuck's influence on it is purely inspirational, after all. Except for the times where it isn't. Maybe Intermission 2 Side 1 can be slightly more quasi-canon now, if you believe hard enough.
More than anything else, this opens up the floodgates for the viable creation of a ton of merchandising and other creative opportunities, without threat of a cease and desist!
Where that takes us is anyone's guess. But isn't the endless uncertainty a little exciting?
We're all looking forward to making the best out of this incredible situation! Vast Error is going to be thirteen years old from concept to current update in the next couple months, and I don't think anyone on the team could be happier with how everything has turned out over time. There are so many exceptional, hard working, passionate writers, artists, musicians and programmers who have spent countless hours keeping this project chugging along at top quality for the past several years.
I feel this is the culmination of all that effort.
Thank you so much for supporting us and reading Vast Error, whether you're an oldhead or have just started reading today. We look forward to sharing so much more with you.
